Disc Viability

Hey all! So, i've decided it's time to dust off my priest (85) I haven't played it since before the new talent system went live
My Favoured specc is Disc, all though i used to use Holy in raids/dungeons
My question is how Viable is Disc? I was thinking of leveling via Disc and wanted to do dungeons too, basically i would rather only use Disc as i'm abit of a slow learner sometimes with speccs lol, And trying to play two different speccs will confuse the crap out of me, SO is Disc good for healing dungeons? Or should i go Holy for that?

Also any tips on Priest/Stats or even the current rotation would be greatly appreciated=)

Thanks for reading!

Originally Posted by Tony Stark

They say that the best weapon is the one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once. That's how Dad did it, that's how America does it, and it's worked out pretty well so far. I present to you the newest in Stark Industries' Freedom line. Find an excuse to let one of these off the chain, and I personally guarantee, the bad guys won't even wanna come out of their caves. Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration... the Jericho.

They say that the best weapon is the one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once. That's how Dad did it, that's how America does it, and it's worked out pretty well so far. I present to you the newest in Stark Industries' Freedom line. Find an excuse to let one of these off the chain, and I personally guarantee, the bad guys won't even wanna come out of their caves. Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration... the Jericho.

If i were you i would go Shadow just for the levelling process as questing i believe is more efficient.

I understand what you are saying about learning your spec over time, im kind of the same... But the current dungeons and hc dungeons once you hit 90 are honestly faceroll so you could easily once you hit 90 touch up with a good Disc/Holy guide and practice same in said dungeons, you have to run a few HC's anyway.

As far as the choice between Holy and Disc, Disc is your favourite - stick to it as you will enjoy it more. That being said, Holy is currently stronger than Disc and both specs are not currently comparable to the other healing classes. Dont let this put you off of your Priest or Discipline in particular, we still have fights where we can shine and Priests for as long as i can remember have historically had less than enjoyable first tiers of new expansions.

Bliz have buffed priests slightly since release and it has helped but i expect we may see another buff down the line, or i hope. lol!

As Mandible said, you are going to want a lot of spirit - A LOT! Spirit is once again our regen stat, even Rapture now scales with Spirit.

Lastly there is no rotation, there will never be one. As a healer you need to evaluate the situation and cast the spell that keeps your target alive while using the least amount of mana possible. So you have a priority rather than a set rotation. Discipline requires you to have somewhat in depth knowledge of the fight you're attempting to heal so that you know when damage is incoming and can use your Discipline abilities to mitigate some of that damage. To some extent we are proactive healers whereas the rest are all reactive healers, our mitigation dwarfs that of Paladins.

I strongly suggest you brush up with one of the many guides available. How to Priest has a decent guide if you're interested.

as for 5man dungeons i didnt see any problems in healing them as disc while leveling (started off with quite nice hc ds gear) and heroic 5mans now are a joke.
i had like upto 3k spirit during that time, maybe 3,5 when i hit 90, used mini shadowfiends (talented) and had no mana issues.

as for raids, i do 10man and i have bit over 9k spirit just in gear, unbuffed (in raids i use spirit flask with alch bonus) which is about comfortable, still stacking more spirit though.

How it should be is stack spirit until you are comfortable with your regen. Me personally like to stack it to the max, as more heals = more hps.

What you got to remember with Disc is that its is pro-active healing not re-active.
You need to anticipate damage and pre shield your raid with spirit shell and Divine aegis.

I personally like to go Disc for dungeons as I smite/penance/holy fire the crap out of the boss which in turn heals the raid and I out dps the rest of the group :P
makes the dungeon go faster and is fun seeing some falling behind you cause they so noob

All in all Disc is still very viable on fights Stones guards hc especially I out heal a pala and shammy on that fight with easy,
almost 30K+ so dont let anyone tell you that disc isnt viable its just not the best on some fights and is a bit hard to manage the mana this early in the expansion.

Thanks for your replys! Much appreciated, I plan on doing a good portion of leveling via dungeons, so ill stay Disc for now, never actually played Shadow so i'll avoid that i seem to be killing things easy enough at the moment anyway as Disc

Originally Posted by Tony Stark

They say that the best weapon is the one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once. That's how Dad did it, that's how America does it, and it's worked out pretty well so far. I present to you the newest in Stark Industries' Freedom line. Find an excuse to let one of these off the chain, and I personally guarantee, the bad guys won't even wanna come out of their caves. Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration... the Jericho.

Thanks for your replys! Much appreciated, I plan on doing a good portion of leveling via dungeons, so ill stay Disc for now, never actually played Shadow so i'll avoid that i seem to be killing things easy enough at the moment anyway as Disc

I have been playing disc with my wife as a Guardian Tank and have not had any issues healing 5 mans. I picked up enough greens/blues from the AH to start me off with all Mist gear and with that I have been able to get away with 80% total healing from atonement healing throughout most of the instances.

I even manage some solo play while questing without issue as disc, it is still quite fun.

Its actually very helpful because it keeps the information simple (for a level 85 leveling up to 90). If you were coming from Cata you have to understand the changes to int, spi, rapture, etc but to keep it simple: spirit is now more important than int. Beginning disc priests won't have enough spirit, and spirit is their primary stat (sans some gimmick fights such as if you were going atonement spam).

For holy things are not so clear cut its tough to determine the value of crit vs haste and the exact point where more spirit is pointless is harder to judge.

If you struggle with mana you need more spirit.

If mana is not a problem haste >= int > mastery > crit, for gems. And int > everything for enchants, consumables.

Interestingly, some fights have mechanics which make mana less of a problem.

Now, healing is my OS on my priest (my main) but I can guarantee you that I'm not even near 10k spirit and we're doing HC modes. The 2 MS healers have far more mana regen than me. For TS, spirit is what they should aim for.

Having played disc and holy on beta I decided to do instances as holy due to mana concerns. Much easier and less mana issues. The time they were equal for me was when I played disc perfect, knowing the damage patterns well. Which isn't the case when you first play content, and generally not something which works well for an OS.

I'd also like to point out that in 5mans FDCL + red chakra (+ ToF) works quite well if your tank is geared for the encounter. You simply heal the tank up with a renew and FDCL procs and because you do a lot of damage the encounters go quicker.

So in short I found it easier to heal 5mans as holy (in both beta and live), I find disc a niche in 10m raiding (don't know about 25m), and the stat weight is explained above.

While I do not play a priest, my girlfriend does, and from what I can see it works great in at least normal mode raids (currently 6/6 MV, Running Disc/RDruid/RShaman). If you are able to anticipate the damage, that mitigation is unparalleled, take fight like Elegon and Feng, where a well timed Spirit Shell completely neuters the damage from Annihilation from Elegon's adds, or from the Earthquakes, Velocities, and Drawflames. She easily 2 heals all 2 healable encounters, hits above 50k hps often (im not a healer but this seems decently high) and an absurd amount of absorbs. Also, she's always the lat in our raids to go oom. So viable for raid level healing? Absolutely.

I leveled and geared up as disc, going atonement the whole way. Never had any mana problems in 5mans/H5mans. Struggled a bit in raids until i got to about 10k spirit plus tailoring spirit cape enchant.

We are very viable, but you need to know how each fight goes in order to get the biggest benefit from your spirit shell. Currently the only fight I can see myself maybe going holy on in a raid is grand empress, and that is a big maybe.

I'm currently leveling a second priest (got one 85 horde), wanted to make an alliance char. I'm currently level 73 and I started as disc and bought dual spec at 30 and picked up shadow. I did toggle around with those two in dungeons and while leveling until I found out I liked disc better. I even did more dmg in dungeons as disc as a healer than as shadow in some dungeons at level 60. The reason is things die so fast in low level dungeons and disc has better nukes than shadow if you pick up the damage glyphs (smite, holy fire). And you heal a lowest health player 100% dmg you do so I was basically nuke my targets while keeping the tank at full health. In hellfire ramparts I managed to second the group in damage as a healer.

The main reason I picked disc at this level while leveling and doing dungeons is because shadow hasn't any aoe until level ~75 when they get mind sear.

But I think disc is very viable in dungeons (all specs are) it's only in end game (pve/pvp) when you have to start to think about things being viable or not.

After the buffs, Disc is definitely viable. We're probably still the weakest healing spec but only by a small margin (if you give your best and know the fights you can do good and competitive HPS), and in some encounters Disc is really great.
In addition to that, Disc always has the innate advantage of absorbing most of the damage which is very useful.

Playing Disc effectively requires the most skill out of all healers probably though, you have tons of small cooldowns to track and align (IF, PI, Archangel, SS, Mindbender, ...) before big damage comes in. Now that we have Spirit Shell (which will always(?) be your most important and highest-HPS spell) it's even more important to know when damage comes in and prepare/pre-shield accordingly. If you do it right, you'll do amazing amounts of absorbs/HPS in a short time span and ensure that no one drops too low which eases up the situation a lot.

I'm currently leveling a second priest (got one 85 horde), wanted to make an alliance char. I'm currently level 73 and I started as disc and bought dual spec at 30 and picked up shadow. I did toggle around with those two in dungeons and while leveling until I found out I liked disc better. I even did more dmg in dungeons as disc as a healer than as shadow in some dungeons at level 60. The reason is things die so fast in low level dungeons and disc has better nukes than shadow if you pick up the damage glyphs (smite, holy fire). And you heal a lowest health player 100% dmg you do so I was basically nuke my targets while keeping the tank at full health. In hellfire ramparts I managed to second the group in damage as a healer.

The main reason I picked disc at this level while leveling and doing dungeons is because shadow hasn't any aoe until level ~75 when they get mind sear.

But I think disc is very viable in dungeons (all specs are) it's only in end game (pve/pvp) when you have to start to think about things being viable or not.

DoTs are not viable when doing dungeons except on bosses, and are only viable if you pull a shitload of adds while soloing. In the latter case, goes great with engineering.

Holy and disc are very good in dungeons even as damage dealer because they're single target damage. Holy will be buffed here damage-wise in 5.1 (red chakra), while as disc you can simply atonement spam.

I have RaFed various alts at end of Cata (in 5.0 patch, without heirlooms btw) and found mana becoming more tight as you near level 80 but before that I never had to drink or anything. I can't speak for mana in the 80-85 range because I only leveled one priest in patch 4.0.3 or 4.0.6 when disc had severe mana issues as well. This was the first time I went holy because before that I was leveling from 1-80 as disc.

So the people talking about mana issues, right now it does not apply to any low level healer in instances.

If you study WoL and such you'll find holy does more healing output even on a fight like Gara'jal the Spiritbinder HC but in this specific case you need to remember all the absorbs on voodoo dolled people count 3x because all the damage mitigated from shadow bolts would've been done 3fold otherwise.

As a disc priest, and one who's refused to switch to holy whenever disc was deemed "bad" (the last two expansions, basically) I can put it as simply as this: disc scales extremely well with gear. When you're first starting out and you're running around with blues and maybe even a couple of greens, you're going to have throughput problems, mostly because you're going to have mana problems.

I was frustrated when I first hit 90 - I had all these awesome spells and great utility to help my raid but I never, ever had the mana to use them. So when people say to stack spirit, they're not kidding. Right now, my i level is 476 and my spirit is just under 10k unbuffed, and I'm only now starting to feel a little more free with my spells. And once I'm comfortable with mana, I can start working on my secondary specs, which will only help me get better.

I would recommend shadow for questing though. Just to help you get through it quicker - plus, you're going to have to do a loooo-ooooot of dailies and the quicker, the better.

I enjoy Disc more than Holy, would it be accurate to say, at early gear levels, Holy is 'easier'? I gotta agree with Fefina on the scaling, & Disc does have a lot of utility (Spirit Shell is pure win if you know when to utilize it). Holy does have Lightwell/Lightspring however, & it feels a bit more comfortable for me, but then I'm only 88 as of writing.

Originally Posted by Boubouille

[12:07:45] <+Radux> i think Bibi should post a super passive agressive message in there. like "OH NO LOVE FOR BIBI. I SEE HOW IT IS. YOU'RE WELCOME FOR CREATING THE SITE. CARRY ON."

OH NO LOVE FOR BIBI. I SEE HOW IT IS. YOU'RE WELCOME FOR CREATING THE SITE. CARRY ON.